Category: Everything else

The Poop process

I think our body’s poop process is awesome. I know we have an aversion to talking about or thinking about poop. Allow me to explain.

Let’s think about the process for a second – we ingest a lot of material during the day. The body takes it in, makes the best out of the mixture of good and crap we normally eat, and then kicks out the crap. It is an incredible process – one without which it would be impossible to stay in good health.

The big question for us is – what is our mental poop process? Our minds aren’t different – we ingest a mixture of good and crap information/ideas/opinions/thoughts every day. Unlike with food, it is completely up to us to design a process which allows us to filter what works for us and what doesn’t. Some do it with quiet walks or bike rides, others do it with meditation, and some weirdos do it by writing a blog post on what they learnt every day.

The fact remains that a mental poop process is helpful and goes a long way in helping us stay mentally healthy. And, it is up to us to design one.

The ideas-only-in-the-shower flag

The shower has been shown to be a real productivity zone. Shower time tends to be ideas time for many of us. That’s great.

It is also a useful flag / trouble indicator. If you are only having ideas in the shower, it means you aren’t creating enough time for stillness during the day. And, no stillness => no time to think and reflect => no learning => no growth.

An experience is only as great as the memories it leaves you with and as the growth it inspires. And you are short-changing yourself if you are getting through the experience that is this life without giving yourself time to reflect and learn. Learning is not experiencing a crisis situation or sitting in a class. It happens when you reflect on that crisis situation or on what you learnt from that class.

So, enjoy the reflection time in the shower. Put in a waterproof board, if you will, to take ideas down. But, if it is the only time in the day you’re thinking, invest more time in the day for thinking and learning. Take a walk without your headphones, go for a run without listening to music, or just stare into the ceiling. If that means doing less during the day, so be it.

Better to do less… but better.

Your work will get better

My first project was a neighborhood lending library as a 9 year old with 7 “partners” (read: friends). It was a painful experience since one of the partners who contributed 30% of the books threatened to walk away from time-to-time. It also was an important life lesson – beware of partnerships; they don’t look all that good when things go bad.

I was often ashamed at my own contribution to projects I worked on at university. It felt like I just couldn’t do things well. I was very glad we did our talk show but was somehow embarrassed at the same time. The work I did on both projects was not really repeatable. Most of my learnings were about how-not-to-things as I still hadn’t learnt how to do things well.

Things got better with a final university project and with RealLeaders.tv. But, our RealLeaders.tv team would be the first to admit that the process was neither clean nor sustainable. Similarly, it took me a good year and a half at work before I gladly brought forth an excel sheet I worked on – I was perennially reluctant. It is too early to say anything about Help2Grow.org but, I think, our systems are better than any of the other projects I’ve worked on. It look a long time before I began working on processes that were repeatable. This blog is evidence of that. I do things things have gotten better over these six and a half years. And, long may that trend continue.

Many of these projects were painful self-inflicted learning experiences which didn’t really make sense at the time. The one common theme is that they’ve always made sense looking back. For instance, the video editing skills I picked up from my talk show days have been incredibly useful in a vast variety of situations in these past 5 years. Seeking out projects in addition to what you’re “supposed” to be doing may feel masochistic and make you wonder why you inflict more pain on yourself. But, they always are worth it. The dots only connect when you’re looking back.

Most of these projects will fail, for one reason or the other. That’s the point. We don’t strengthen our failure muscle enough in our workplaces and in our lives (more on this another day).

Finally, your work will get better. Definitely. You just have to put a lot of effort into life and life will give back just as much. Putting a lot of effort into life doesn’t mean things get any easier for you. In fact, there probably will be more challenges than normal. But, as a wise friend pointed out to me, you’ll cope just fine.

And, if things don’t work, not to worry. We will try again tomorrow.

Russian hackers and online security

This blog has been the target of Russian hackers of late and they managed to take the site down today. We’ve finally gotten it back (thanks to support from my hosting provider and a close friend).

My friend had sage advice for me – if someone really wanted to hack into your website, they could. So, take steps to make it as hard as possible. I’ve already asked him for more advice on how to do that and intend to get on it tomorrow.

This experience has brought three learnings with it –
1. You are never fully secure online. That doesn’t mean you keep your doors open and allow all interested folk in. So, take measures to keep your websites safe. Start with strong passwords.
2. If you haven’t enabled two-factor authentication yet, I hope you consider it. I have this on my list for tomorrow.
3. The flip side of the situation – if Russian hackers feel you are worthy of an attack, there is a chance you are doing something right. :-) So, thank you for your support. I am very grateful.

That said, I’m off to enjoy what remains of my Saturday evening. Wishing you a great weekend!

3 rules for helping anybody who wants help with a decision

1. The decision doesn’t matter. The process does. It is all about the process.

2. Your biggest value add would be to walk them through a process. My suggestion would be the Decisive process – I carry a small card summarizing this process in my pocket.

3. Offer your point of view ONLY if asked. (I always need help with this)

If you find yourself talking more than them, take a timeout. This isn’t about you, it is about them.

PS: The wording in the title is key – they need to want the help.

Actions and Outcomes

Our actions drive outcomes. In most cases, we don’t control outcomes. Our outcomes are generally controlled either by other people (boss, teacher, customer, peers) or by environmental factors (markets, context). At best, all we control is the process that leads to our actions.

And, yet, we are capable of spending a large proportion of our time on outcome-related activities (worrying about outcomes, then worrying about the results, then feeling upset or elated by the results). And, outcome-related activities have got to rank among the worst ways to spend our time because –
1. Spending time on outcomes is useless as they don’t generally change the outcome
2. They take away time from today’s processes and actions that will determine future outcomes

So, if you are caught up about something today, I’d recommend asking just one question – “Is this within my control?”
If the answer is yes, then it is in the action zone. Then, if it is aligned with your priorities, agonize over the process, front-load work, and give it your best shot.
If the answer is no, think about all the actions you could be spending your time on that would make tomorrow better. There generally are a few. If you can’t find any, call your mom. Or stare at the ceiling if you will.

Anything you choose to do will be better than worrying about an outcome you do not control.

How do you measure a day

Do you measure how a day went?

If yes, how do you measure it? There are multiple options –
1. A feeling of satisfaction / happiness
2. Time spent on productive work
3. Time spent on top 3 priorities
4. Top priorities accomplished
5. Number of to do list items accomplished
6. Time spent having fun
…etc.

The goals we set drive the outcomes we achieve. The absence of goals drives outcomes too – they just may or may not be what we want.

How we measure our days drives how we live our days. How we live our days drives how we live our life.

10 years ago – at this time

What were you doing 10 years ago – at this time?

Bill Gates rightly said we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year but underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. I don’t know about you but I know I didn’t even think all that much about an interesting future. I was just a 11th grader who was growing increasingly worried about my grades and getting into a good undergraduate program after long stretches of time spent away from school for extra curricular competitions.

People often refer to periods like school/university/graduate school as the best periods in their lives. I couldn’t disagree more with this thought. Yes, these times are special. But, I find thinking of them as the “best” periods feels so limiting since they go by in the first quarter of our lives. The beauty of life, as with any other thing, increases as we learn more about it. So, if we’re learning on this journey, it is almost certain that the best days are up ahead. The difficulties get more challenging and interesting, the good times get more fulfilling and our ability to appreciate it only goes up.

So, let’s take this moment to reflect on what we’ve accomplished in the last 10 years. If, like me, you’ve performed way above your own expectations, good for you. I’m sure it was a combination of luck and skill. If it didn’t, well, now is the best moment to change things so things look better when we ask this question 10 years later.

Here’s to more… or less (depending on what you like).

But, most importantly, here’s to better.

The anatomy of a mistake

Last weekend, I decided to add 75 new friends I’d gotten to know over a week to the 200 words project with an option to opt-out.

In hindsight, that was a mistake. I judge it as one because it has given me an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since. What I should have done is made it an opt-in. That it seems so obvious now makes it even more exasperating.

Rather than kick myself for the result of the decision, it makes for an interesting case for analysis. What led to the mistake? I can think of 2 reasons –

1. Sleep deprivation and illness. Low sleep, not feeling great => limited willpower. Beware of decisions you make when you are low on willpower.
2. No clear decision process. Generally, behind every bad decision is the gap left by the absence of a process. In this case, I have always added folk to the 200 words project via a mix of opt-ins and opt-outs depending on how well I know the person. It is my way of staying in touch with people and it turns out to be very nice to be in touch with folk from 6 years ago thanks to a consistent weekly email. Additionally, there is a lot of effort that goes into making it useful – so I don’t see it as a spammy share (talk about bias…). And, therein lies the problem with an undefined decision making process that, in reality, is very intricate. I’m better off simplifying it by just saying opt-in only. And that’s what I’ll do from here on in.

A few other learnings I have taken away –
1. Behind every mistake is a bad decision. Don’t kick yourself for the mistake, fix the decision. Every mistake, thus, is just a learning opportunity. And yes, this is hard to implement. I seem to get there thanks to this blog but it only happens after kicking myself a few times.
2. You amplify the bad reactions and forget the good.  This is hard to correct as it is human nature to focus on a negative reaction. It is a good reminder, however.
3. No one cares about you and your mistakes as much as you do. Again, a reminder.
4. Bad feelings in the stomach are a sign that some insecurity has been pricked. This one is an insecurity of feeling unfairly judged.
5. Keep flexing your “rejected” muscle. Try, fail and get rejected, try again. Trying again matters a lot. Your “rejected” muscles need to be working well so you don’t get too upset with yourself after you make a mistake.

A friend wondered aloud yesterday as to how I managed to think of a learning every day. I pointed to the more-than-average number of mistakes I seem to make. I hope he’s reading this one. :-)

Finally, to add a dash of perspective, I did remind myself that these aren’t mistakes my grandchildren will ever even know of. That’s a good reminder, too (since we are in reminder zone).

We live and we learn.

Small problems and big problems

Life throws small problems at us every day. They’re more than enough to keep us busy. However, it isn’t optimal to spend all our time solving small problems. When Toyota’s legendary thinker Taiichi Ono came to the same conclusion, he decided he would train the organization to look for the big problems using the five why approach.

Taiichi Ono isn’t alone in his approach to problem solving. Great thinkers over time have approached the world with a determination to understand the principles that govern it. That’s how Taiichi Ono and Henry Ford changed manufacturing. They dug deep into the hundreds of small problems in a manufacturing plant, understood the key principles, and developed frameworks that they then applied rigorously and tweaked with more feedback.

This is hard to do – no surprise there. So, how do you go about doing it? Albert Einstein’s approach was to just stay with problems longer. And he probably knows a thing or two about difficult problems.

The good news is that this approach can then be applied to every aspect of life. You can understand people better by understanding the principles that govern them. You can understand financial markets by understanding the principles that govern them. Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates have made billions of dollars by doing this with unerring consistency.

Like any approach, this one has its downsides. When you begin applying this approach to understand people or when you help people through their problems, you can come across as very intimidating. That’s because digging deep requires you to ask tough questions and tough questions never fail to intimidate people. Additionally, a commitment to attempting to get to the big problems requires you to be open to consistently revisit your assumptions and approach to life. Most find that too overwhelming.

The final and most important pitfall is to do with ourselves. A commitment to constantly finding the underlying principles requires an assumption that most small problems are symptoms of a bigger problem. While that is largely true, it completely negates coincidences and outliers. In our desire to find patterns, we can end up falling prey to all sorts of false assumptions to explain a pattern that doesn’t exist. And, if we don’t guard against insularity and over-confidence, we might lose the ability to distinguish between reality and our perception of it. We will fail miserably without self awareness.

That said, the beauty of a principle-based approach is that when we put in the effort, we begin to understand and appreciate the inter-connectedness of this world and thus, begin to appreciate the beauty of this life. It is only when you learn the principles behind tennis do you really appreciate Roger Federer’s genius.

I’ve said this before and will say again – habitually ignoring the small problems and finding the big problems is very hard. Try the five why approach if you will and you will realize very quickly that the questions only get tougher as you make your way along the process.

And therein lies the tough part about digging deep and attempting to understand the principles – it doesn’t feel like a very rewarding process.

Until it does.